Chapter 17: The Alchemist's Gambit and a Spent Legacy (1991-1992)
The arrival of Harry Potter at Hogwarts in September 1991 was an event Corvus Blackwood observed with the detached curiosity of a seasoned naturalist encountering a much-storied, yet ultimately predictable, specimen. His foreknowledge, gleaned from the Harry Potter books of his past life, stripped the occasion of any mystique. He watched the Sorting Hat place the boy in Gryffindor, noted the immediate, almost gravitational pull between Potter, Weasley, and Granger, and felt the faint, agitated thrum from the spectral Lord Voldemort – a predatory interest now keenly focused on the child who had caused his downfall.
More significantly for Corvus, Professor Quirinus Quirrell, with his stuttering demeanor and garlic-laden turban, was a walking, talking beacon of Voldemort's parasitic presence. The multiplier, even linked to Voldemort's diminished spirit, provided Corvus with an unnervingly clear window into the Dark Lord's thoughts as he clung to Quirrell's soul: his frustration at his weakened state, his burning desire for the Philosopher's Stone that Dumbledore had (as Corvus knew he would) brought to Hogwarts for "safekeeping," and his cunning plans to manipulate Quirrell into acquiring it.
Corvus, in his final year of teaching, conducted his classes on Advanced Magical Constructs and Ancient Warding Philosophies with his usual exacting standards. His students, now including a new cohort of N.E.W.T. candidates, regarded him with a mixture of awe and trepidation. He cared little for their adulation or their fear; his true focus was twofold: observing the unfolding canon events surrounding the Stone, and subtly aligning his own research within Hogwarts' vast archives towards alchemy, transmutation, and the esoteric principles of life-extension, all subjects pertinent to Nicolas Flamel's magnum opus.
He watched with an almost academic detachment as the familiar plot points of Potter's first year unspooled. The troll in the dungeons on Halloween (a crude diversion by Quirrellmort, whose amplified panic and strategic thinking Corvus experienced). The discovery of Fluffy, the three-headed dog guarding the trapdoor. The trio's fumbling investigations, their suspicions wrongly falling on Severus Snape. Corvus felt Voldemort's contempt for Snape, his own former servant, yet also a grudging acknowledgment of the Potions Master's skill when Snape counter-cursed Quirrell during the Quidditch match. Each event was a data point, confirming his past-life memories, but also providing fresh, amplified insights into Voldemort's spectral machinations through Quirrell – his methods of control, his anxieties, his desperate hunger for the Stone.
Corvus paid particular attention to the protections Dumbledore and the other professors had laid for the Stone. He knew them from the books – the Devil's Snare, the flying keys, the giant chessboard, the logic puzzle with potions. Through Voldemort's frustrated attempts (via Quirrell) to analyze and bypass these defenses, Corvus gained a tenfold amplified understanding of their construction, their strengths, and their (often glaring, to his advanced intellect) weaknesses. It was a fascinating practical study in applied magical security, albeit one designed more to test a specific Gryffindor trio than to truly thwart a determined Dark Lord.
As the year progressed, Voldemort's influence over Quirrell grew stronger, more desperate. Corvus felt the spectral Dark Lord's constant pain, his reliance on unicorn blood (a defiling act whose magical residue Corvus could almost taste through the multiplier), and his furious impatience. The Stone was the only hope for a swift return to a physical body, and Voldemort drove Quirrell relentlessly towards it.
The night of the Stone's ultimate confrontation arrived, just as Corvus's foreknowledge predicted. He felt Quirrellmort bypass the initial protections, the amplified thoughts of both the terrified professor and the parasitic Dark Lord a chaotic symphony in his mind. He knew Harry Potter and his friends were following. Corvus, however, had no intention of interfering with that particular drama. His interest lay solely in the Stone itself.
While Dumbledore was conveniently (and, Corvus suspected, deliberately) away at the Ministry, and the castle's attention was focused on the apparent end-of-year calm, Corvus made his move. He had spent months subtly studying the deep wards of the third-floor corridor, analyzing their magical signatures, their fail-safes. He knew that once Quirrell passed through the final obstacles, the path would be, for a brief window, significantly less guarded, the enchantments momentarily disrupted or focused on the immediate intruders.
As Potter faced Quirrellmort before the Mirror of Erised, Corvus, cloaked in disillusionment charms so potent he was less a man and more a ripple in the fabric of reality, slipped past the now-subdued Fluffy (likely exhausted or magically tranquilized after the trio's passage). He navigated the subsequent chambers with contemptuous ease, his own magic effortlessly neutralizing or bypassing protections that had challenged children. He felt the chaotic magical discharge of Quirrell's demise as Lily Potter's sacrificial protection incinerated the possessed professor, and the agonizing shriek of Voldemort's spirit as it fled, once again bodiless and thwarted.
In the ensuing confusion, as Dumbledore "miraculously" returned and rushed to the final chamber to find an unconscious Harry and the remains of Quirrell, Corvus Blackwood, unseen and unheard, stepped before the Mirror of Erised. The Philosopher's Stone, dislodged from Quirrell's pocket upon his disintegration, lay on the cold stone floor. Corvus felt no desire to see his deepest wishes reflected; his desires were pragmatic, achievable through his own power and intellect. With a complex, non-verbal summoning charm refined from ancient Blackwood lore, a charm that left no magical trace discernible to any but perhaps Dumbledore at his most focused (and Dumbledore's attention was elsewhere), the blood-red Stone levitated into his waiting, gloved hand.
He secreted it away in a magically shielded, dimensionally pocketed container, and retreated from the chambers as silently as he had come, leaving no hint of his presence. Dumbledore, Corvus surmised, would likely conclude the Stone had been destroyed along with Quirrell, or perhaps that Flamel had reclaimed it, its purpose served. The truth was far more advantageous to Corvus.
Back in the secure, heavily warded confines of his private chambers within Blackwood Manor (to which he'd instantly apparated, his resignation from Hogwarts now truly final with the end of term and this last act), Corvus finally examined his prize. The Philosopher's Stone pulsed with a faint, residual warmth, its crimson depths swirling with ancient magic. But as he applied his most sophisticated diagnostic charms, his initial academic excitement gave way to a curious revelation.
The Stone, while undoubtedly genuine, was… depleted. Its matrix, the intricate web of enchantments that allowed for transmutation and the creation of the Elixir of Life, was frayed, its core energies almost entirely spent. It was like a magnificent, ancient battery that had been drained through centuries of use by Nicolas Flamel and his wife. Its current value was not as an active source of gold or eternal life, but as an unparalleled research object – a blueprint, perhaps, to understanding the lost art of its creation.
A slow, predatory smile touched Corvus's lips. This explained everything. Why Flamel, after six centuries, would finally agree to let the Stone go. Why Dumbledore would use such a legendary artifact as bait in what was essentially a schoolboy adventure. It was not the priceless, all-powerful object of legend, not anymore. It was a magnificent, almost exhausted, relic.
But for Corvus Blackwood, armed with the multiplier and the prospect of Voldemort's desperate intellect, an exhausted relic was an unparalleled opportunity.
His final year at Hogwarts concluded. He formally took his leave of Dumbledore, offering polite regrets that he could not continue, citing the pressing needs of his House. Dumbledore, Corvus noted, seemed content, believing the threat of Voldemort (and the Stone) dealt with for the time being.
Once ensconced back in Blackwood Manor, Corvus began the next phase of his plan. He knew the disembodied Voldemort was now weaker than ever, his spirit reeling from its contact with Potter's protective magic. But he also knew Voldemort's obsession with regaining a body and achieving true immortality would be all-consuming. The Philosopher's Stone, even a depleted one, would be an irresistible lure.
With meticulous care, Corvus prepared the "spent" Stone. He wrapped it in enchantments that would subtly guide it, making it seem like a lost, forgotten treasure, waiting to be found by someone attuned to dark magic. Then, using an untraceable, long-range delivery spell of his own invention – one that mimicked the random drift of lost objects – he sent the Philosopher's Stone on a journey, its destination the desolate forests of Albania, where he knew Voldemort's weakened spirit had fled.
Corvus leaned back in his chair in the heart of his ancestral library, a sense of profound anticipation settling over him. He could already feel the faint, distant flicker of Voldemort's spectral consciousness, the first stirrings of confused hope as the Stone's faint magical signature began to register on his ethereal senses.
The Dark Lord would undoubtedly seize upon this "miraculous" discovery. He would pour every ounce of his formidable intellect, his centuries of hoarded dark knowledge, his desperate ingenuity, into trying to understand the Stone, to reactivate it, to wring from it the secrets of transmutation and the Elixir of Life. He would research Flamel, alchemy, ancient rituals, anything and everything connected to its creation.
And Corvus Blackwood, through the ever-present, tenfold multiplier, would receive all of it. Every theory Voldemort explored, every dead-end he encountered, every tiny spark of insight he gained into the Stone's complex matrix, every forgotten alchemical principle he unearthed – all would flow to Corvus, amplified and refined.
Voldemort, in his desperation, would become Corvus's unwitting, unpaid, and extraordinarily motivated research assistant.
With the knowledge gleaned from Voldemort's desperate efforts, Corvus was confident that he, with his own intact soul, superior intellect, and vast resources, could eventually decipher the true secrets of the Philosopher's Stone. Not to replicate Flamel's nearly exhausted artifact, but to create a new one, a perfect one, for his own use, for the ultimate security and longevity of House Blackwood.
The game had indeed entered a new phase. And Corvus Blackwood, the scholar of shadows, had just made his opening move, a gambit of audacious subtlety. He settled in to wait, a patient predator, eager for the rich harvest of knowledge his vanquished, yet still useful, foe was about to provide.